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Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

Originally Posted by Cinnabar

Well to be honest, I don't remember much details concerning the Rose so I won't argue over that anymore lest I misremember and say something wrong. XD I didn't remember that it was discussed on TV, but if that's the case, then it would seem weird that the Ants didn't know anything about it. Ultimately, I think the problem with the Ant arc is that it's such a huge arc and it's very likely at any point the readers may think Togashi may have bitten off more than he can chew. Hence why the ending may not be a good payoff. Now whether Togashi was successful or not is up to the reader, of course.

Interesting point there in the last paragraph; I understand it better now. Komugi aside, and possibly Netero as well, the Ants don't see humans overall as nothing more than food or an inferior species. Or would you say that the respect Meruem has gained for Komugi (and maybe Netero in the end?) is also only because we're seeing things through the human POV?

After the Ants were defeated, the cover up story says Diego rounded up the citizens and planned to blow them up with Rose. So clearly, it's something that can be discussed in TV.

The way Meryem values special humans is probably like say you raised your own cow, you'd probably be attached to it too and probably won't turn it into a hamburger, but it doesn't necessarily mean you won't eat hamburgers in general. Meryem most likely geniunely cared for Komugi, but I see no signs of him giving up humans as part of his diet because of her. Sure if Komugi found out about this and asked him to stop, he might listen (since it's after all just a diet change) but he certainly isn't offering to change his diet proactively because of Komugi.

I think the Royals + Meryem are just so far above humans that the only relevent discussion they have with lesser species is what to eat for dinner. Meryem told Netero that concept of a national border is insane, i.e. just because you're in this country you get all the stuff while the guys across the border starve to death. So say he takes over the world and abolish borders, and while on the way to the poor guys he got hungry and just ate those guys. That doesn't mean he's a hypocrite. He has his world vision and then there's also the question of what's for dinner. Picking between humans, hamburgers, or other ants to Meryem is like we trying to decide to have ham, chicken, or hamburger for lunch. In fact his treatment of human is quite similar than those who advocate ethical slaughtering of livestocks. These guys might want better rights for the animals, but in the end the livestock is still just food. Meryem has never compromised on the 'human = food' premise because in the end, that's all the value he sees in humanity minus an occaisonal special person like Komugi.

Know or don't know...That's not the issue. Because we all know about nuclear weapons, yet none expected to be used in that fight.

Even being the best strategist around, there are some things that will always surprise you.

But then it'd make no sense for Pufu to go 'I'm bleeding for no reason, I have no idea what could've possibly caused that to happen!"

The part that really messes up the Rose is the poison. The Ants should definitely know about that and either have some countermeasures to deal with the poison, or if not, at least recognize what it does. It's fair to say that the Ants did not expect such a weapon to be used, but it's not fair to say the Ants don't even know what this weapon does.

It might have worked if the Rose is just explosive but this particular one used is laced with deadly poison. However the fact that Palm knows about it means it's clearly an easily knowable fact. In fact, given that it is extremely likely for Palm to be captured, just on a simple 'need to know' basis would mean she should be the last person to know about the poison because she has the highest chance of being captured and revealing this secret ot the Ants.

There's nothing to suggest Palm would know anything more about weapons of mass destruction than any other Hunters. The way she explained it, it's more like a 'of course everyone knows there's poison in the Rose'. I mean this weapon has been used in the past before, and it'd be pretty hard to hide the fact that people who didn't die from the blast died to some mysterious causes a few hours later. Of course given its potent poison and spreading effect it'd seem like each time it's used it'd take out an entire nation due to the poison spreading but that never happened.

At any rate the Ants in possession of such weapon and have their human contacts. Even if they have no intention to use them you'd think they'd check with their human contact who should told them like 'yeah the poison in there is serious stuff, don't mess with it'.

In fact because Palm is likely to be captured the more knowledgeable she is in general the worse off the Hunters will be.

It'd probably have been okay if Rose is divided into just explosive type versus biological type and that the biological type was almost never used. Frankly in a world with air travel, anything as potent as the Rose would pretty much guaranteed to wipe out the world given its virulent properties unless you immediately locked down ground zero, and that just doesn't seem possible given history indicates it's something that even a large terrorist group could potentially have (it was banned after being used as a terorrist weapon).

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

I think people would die at the explosion without knowing if it was poisonous or not, TBH.. And if it's Hunter knowledge, I doubt that all the palace had the information before.

You're assuming it's common knowledge, but that's just an hypothesis. Mine is that it's known by some people, ants couldn't know about it because all the information they gathered were in the books that were in the palace and the information gathered by the humans there which is why Togashi made those people foreign to technology or the world.

The Sky is pouring
The wind is blowing
The sea looks red,
a surging sea of flames
looks like the entrance to hell
'Perfect', the captain said.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

I think people would die at the explosion without knowing if it was poisonous or not, TBH.. And if it's Hunter knowledge, I doubt that all the palace had the information before.

You're assuming it's common knowledge, but that's just an hypothesis. Mine is that it's known by some people, ants couldn't know about it because all the information they gathered were in the books that were in the palace and the information gathered by the humans there which is why Togashi made those people foreign to technology or the world.

As described you only have to be near the explosion of the Rose and you'd probably die in a few hours too. It's pretty hard to hide this kind of stuff. Even if nobody knew why this happened it'd definitely be noted so it'd definitely be common knowledge simply because the Rose has been used in past conflicts and it'd be rather obvious that people mysteriously die even if they didn't get hit by the initial explosion if they're anywhere near the detonation.

Honestly as described the poison is too virulent to be useful because it'd just wipe out the entire world since air travel is possible (as long as any poisoned guy gets on an airship pretty much everyone in the destination nation is dead). It'd be MAD but the other side doesn't even have to launch anything back, because as long as a single survivor got on an airship you just destroyed your own nation too.

The Ants are foreign but they're not THAT foreign. Explosives aren't likely to be effective but it is not going to be useless, or otherwise Knuckles wouldn't suggested using a national level military to deal with Meryem. The Ants are strong but it's not going to be like DBZ where you use some military grade explosives and all you get is more dust. Pufu suggested the reborn Meryem hide in the presidental bunker until the invasion forces are taken care of. They do not have the usual 'I eat explosives for breakfast' DBZ like attitude. They probably can withstand a lot of punishment but you'll never see a Royal or Meryem just walk up to a bomb for fun. And if they pay attention to explosives which they're reasonably protected against, they should definitely pay attention to stuff like biological weapons. Note that Ants, as a whole, do not even have poison immunity. Both Cheetu and Leol figured Morel was using poison in his smoke and tried to avoid it, indicating that Ants do not have poison immunity. Sure the Royals and Meryem might have stronger DNA, but biological weapons like Rose poison is also presumably a lot stronger than just normal poison too. For example, you wouldn't expect Killua to survive Rose poison, so there's no reason for the Ants to assume their heritage was enough to protect them from biological weapons. If anything they should be more worried about biological weapons than physical weapons.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

The one in the palace? Yeah, no idea either. Maybe something has led the original Diego to leave his position of "power", probably something regarding Bizef (who was the power behind the scenes from the start apparently). The other could be an double chosen to replace him and keep the status quo (maye Diego was an revolution leader of sorts?).

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

Originally Posted by Phantron

The Royal+ tiers aren't mixed with humans. They're pure Ants and as Meryem puts it, whatever 'individuality' they may have is just merely another test along the way to the end of evolution. Meryem doesn't even view it as a weakness but as a necessary step, and if some of the Royals never got out of the 'individual' stage there's no reason to believe he'd even care. Perhaps he'll be disappointed that the Royals did not reach the same stage as he is but he is always aware there is no such thing as a perfect world.

Yupi was the only Royal Guard who was purely Beast made. Once the Ants feed the queen Humans she loved the taste. And from then forth with the ants evolutuon they were Ant/Beast/Human Hybrids. I repeat again only Yupi was a hybrid Beast reason why he was so slow.

All the Guards started to get a sense of Individuality. Pitou listening to the King and agreeing to follow Gon all for that girls sake she should have attacked Gon instantly and the rest but she didn't...Yupi learned how to control his power and didn't kill Knuckle&Morau because they were his catalyst to him controling his powers. Can't member much about Pufu cause I don't like him.

No one can reach the stage of the King not in the Ant community.

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Netero's attempt to rationalize which side Meryem leans shows his lack of ability to comprehend a superior species, because he still thinks humans are supposed to be equal to Ants. The whole point is that the Ants are superior humans on the food chain/evolution. It's like cows saying humans are bipolar because some people talk about animal rights while still eating hamburgers, while other humans don't care about cows at all. It's not that humans have any particular agenda against cows. The guys arguing for better treatment of cows probably don't see cows as equal. Meryem can give favorable or unfavorable treatment to humans completely on a whim, because ultimately they're just another species to conquer.

Dude What?! The President is a professional why should he have let him self be swayed the King for him to enslave halfof Humanity and eat the other half. You can look at this for the Ants side all you want, they were too dangerous to be left alone or alive. Only the few moved with Human emotions at the end because they weren't following the King or Queen. Also due to their Human sides of them. The royal uards and King had to be stopped.

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The real failure of the arc is that since the reader of HXH are all presumably humans, it's tempting to see the story from the human's point of view. There's a short story by the author who did Doraemon about this world where the role of cows and humans are reversed, so this human from Earth crash landed there, found this cute girl who was about to get eaten and rescued her, and the girl was wondering why this guy interfered when she considered herself lucky to be picked as the equivalent of Kobe human steak. This is obviously the cow's point of view, and a human raised in cow's point of view would consider being Kobe human steak to be a great honor. Likewise the Ant arc should be looked at from the Ant's point of view, because they're the dominant species. The Ants have plans to deal with mostly national-level entities, which is why they have a fake government front (though bizarrely, they don't know about national-level weapons like the Rose). They heard about these Aura using guys but for the most part they don't really fear the abilities at the human level, so they make plans as they should but they don't really take humans seriously. For the most part the arc confirms that the Ants, at the Royal level, really have no reason to take humans seriously on a 1on1 level. Throughout the arc we're constantly reminded a single Royal can decimate the entire strike force minus Netero almost at will. Even the intelligence that human pride in, we consistently see Royals beat human at that game too. Pufu obviously was a master of this, but even Yupi saw through Knuckle's weakness.

Are you reading what your writing? Are there really any other intelligent Creatures on the planet Earth that can read a Manga besides Humans.Your buggin out my friend big time. And you just solved your whole Rose bomb thing The Guards had no reason to take Humans or any weaponized item they made seriously. Once they possesed nen it was all over for Humans. Pitou beat Kite who was pretty experienced even though she go the jump on him she still did it without Nen.

Originally Posted by Phantron

The nation the Ants seized has Rose. It was reported on national TV that Diego planned on using Rose to blow all the people up in the cover up story.

That's what was reported! We who read the manga and knew what really went down in East Gourdo know it was the president who used that bomb. The Ants were never mentioned and they were simply making sense of the event to the world painting Diego as an extra evil dictator. He had no Rose and didn't plan to use it agains'this ppl.

Quote:

The human point of view is fairly irrelevent because after all the readers are human too and it's not hard to see that if you're faced with a species that will likely result in the extinction or at least trying to completely conquer your world you're not going to negotiate with them. But the whole trying to figure out which way the Ants (especially Meryem) are leaning or what might've influenced is just human conceit. If the favorite food of Ants were bacon instead of human, you wouldn't have any of nonsensical philsophical stuff about what motivates the Ants, and yet from the Ants' point of view there is no difference between their favorite food being bacon or human hamburger. It just happens that in this world human beat out bacon as their favorite food. If bacon was the preferred food of the Ants, would the Ants even bother negotiating with humans? Maybe they wouldn't even care enough to attack an inferior species that tastes worse than bacon? Or would they have already unleashed the Rose figuring humans are useless when you got bacon? You really have no idea because in the grand scheme of things, the Ants aren't concerned about humans if not for the fact that they like to eat them.

I'm starting to think your Loco Home'. The ants belong to the dark world,outer , world, W/e Togashi came up with out of nowhere. They could have eaten other things besides Humans but then they would have just over ran the Humans and conquered us anyway. The President has zero tolerance but still had a heart. His character was very intelligent he knew they had to be killed either way because they don't belong. That's all this really boils down to you can't introduce exotic species to certain evoriments and the President understood this philosphy with more of a complexity considering they were intellegent beast with conquest on their mind.

Originally Posted by heron bpv

The one in the palace? Yeah, no idea either. Maybe something has led the original Diego to leave his position of "power", probably something regarding Bizef (who was the power behind the scenes from the start apparently). The other could be an double chosen to replace him and keep the status quo (maye Diego was an revolution leader of sorts?).

Just my speculation though.

Diego was sort of a Fidel Castro. He was the President of a country where the ppl ain't really like him much, he didn't treat them good from what I can pick up in the story. He had a double cause he knew Organnizations, HXH Community would have killed him or remove him from power eventually.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

Originally Posted by Phantron

As described you only have to be near the explosion of the Rose and you'd probably die in a few hours too. It's pretty hard to hide this kind of stuff. Even if nobody knew why this happened it'd definitely be noted so it'd definitely be common knowledge simply because the Rose has been used in past conflicts and it'd be rather obvious that people mysteriously die even if they didn't get hit by the initial explosion if they're anywhere near the detonation.

You must take in consideration that they did not know what bomb were used. Common Knowledge is the bomb, rare knowledge is that it's also poisonous. I could say the same of any nuclear weapon.
Still, Pufu was not near the explosion and He thought it was safe for him, an ant. Obviously it wasn't.

Quote:

Honestly as described the poison is too virulent to be useful because it'd just wipe out the entire world since air travel is possible (as long as any poisoned guy gets on an airship pretty much everyone in the destination nation is dead). It'd be MAD but the other side doesn't even have to launch anything back, because as long as a single survivor got on an airship you just destroyed your own nation too.

I don't know why you bring this up, but yes I agree.

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The Ants are foreign but they're not THAT foreign. Explosives aren't likely to be effective but it is not going to be useless, or otherwise Knuckles wouldn't suggested using a national level military to deal with Meryem. The Ants are strong but it's not going to be like DBZ where you use some military grade explosives and all you get is more dust. Pufu suggested the reborn Meryem hide in the presidental bunker until the invasion forces are taken care of. They do not have the usual 'I eat explosives for breakfast' DBZ like attitude. They probably can withstand a lot of punishment but you'll never see a Royal or Meryem just walk up to a bomb for fun. And if they pay attention to explosives which they're reasonably protected against, they should definitely pay attention to stuff like biological weapons. Note that Ants, as a whole, do not even have poison immunity. Both Cheetu and Leol figured Morel was using poison in his smoke and tried to avoid it, indicating that Ants do not have poison immunity. Sure the Royals and Meryem might have stronger DNA, but biological weapons like Rose poison is also presumably a lot stronger than just normal poison too. For example, you wouldn't expect Killua to survive Rose poison, so there's no reason for the Ants to assume their heritage was enough to protect them from biological weapons. If anything they should be more worried about biological weapons than physical weapons.

Knuckles? He did not suggested it. He said that Meryem could took an entire army.
And they know about bombs, but they were not expecting it at all. Again, you can be the best strategist of the world but always you can get surprised. And they don't care for human weapons, actually. They only were interested in Nen because it was the best stuff. As for the rest, it's obvious.

The Sky is pouring
The wind is blowing
The sea looks red,
a surging sea of flames
looks like the entrance to hell
'Perfect', the captain said.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

hi guys,
To start with, I'm fervent hater of the ant arc. In my opinion, the biggest flaw was its slow spiralling storyline. By spiralling I mean it was going in circles, with little advancement.
It was slow and extremely wordy, with lengthy descriptions and oh, horror, the lack of awesome battle scenes.

Most of the battle scenes were so spliced up you hardly get any action and it was a cut to the octopus dude looking for Palm and failing at it too. Or it was cut to a scenes where they were waiting for something. It was soo anti climax.

I badly wanted to see pitou's and gon's battle scene, but it was sadly described only in a couple of panels.

Disappointingly, the battle between pufu and Morel was also drawn out and then pufu ran away.

yupi's fight with Knuckle was stretched for ages, with annoying cuts of other happenings amidst the fighting. and the ending was unsatisfactory and pathetic, with knuckle withdrawing his hakoware ability and yupi leaving the scene.

also I find meruem's design disappointing. he doesn't look threatening, at times his helmet looks really retarded. in my opinion, like a dickhead, literally.

the bad drawings and long waits I can forgive, but all its merits were outweighed by the other factors.
It left me very unsatisfied like I was all wounded up waiting for something epic but nothing really happened in the end.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

The battles in the Ant arc are unexciting because every major villian character is equivalent of a 'last boss' character, probably stronger relatively speaking, compared to an average manga.

Pufu had 1/14 of his power (1/7 of his clone, 50% penalty for not directly inside it) and still can force Killua to retreat while using his new super hacks ability. Yupi also said nobody is even within 1/10 of his total power out of the guys he has fought (which is pretty much everyone). In the average Shonen you'd just take some drugs or get spiky hair but you don't get away with stuff like that in HXH. For the most part all you can do against guys more than 10 times as powerful as you is stall time.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

It always amuses me that CA arc haters reason for hating this arc boils down to "the battles didn't go as I expected it (shounen way) to go so it sucks" and largely ignore the overwhelming difference in power between the two factions evident even at the start of the arc.

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

Originally Posted by kittyklysm

also I find meruem's design disappointing. he doesn't look threatening, at times his helmet looks really retarded. in my opinion, like a dickhead, literally.

What's with everybody wants villains to look obviously villains? What's wrong if they don't "look" threatening? Aren't you tired of having villains that you can tell they are villains by their look? What happened to "don't judge the book by its cover"?

Re: What are your thoughts on Chimera Ant arc haters ?

Originally Posted by shareme

It always amuses me that CA arc haters reason for hating this arc boils down to "the battles didn't go as I expected it (shounen way) to go so it sucks" and largely ignore the overwhelming difference in power between the two factions evident even at the start of the arc.

If you were reading a manga about say 5 ordinary guys trying to take on 4 tanks and then it just turned out the tanks ran over the ordinary guys but one of the survivors called in an airstrike that wouldn't really be exciting stuff even if it makes a lot of sense. Yes if the 5 ordinary guys just started throwing fireballs to knock down the tanks that'd be pretty dumb but so is just getting ran over by a tank.

For the most part HXH assumes everyone has nearly equivalent base physical stats (Gon can break Ilumi's hand prior to even aura existing as a concept) and obviously comparable levels in aura expertise between established characters. Of course there's nothing equivalent on the royal guards let alone Meryem. They have pretty darn good strategy to boot. Two of them possess flight, and virtually every one of them possesses overwhelming speed (Centaur Yupi pretty much teleported behind Knuckles and walked past him, implying he could've killed him any time). Even Netero would get completely owned if he wasn't given the rather absurd ability of being able to knockback opponents he cannot hurt indefinitely with his moves, and even then he'd get destroyed by straight up area effect attacks which at least Yupi and Pufu possesses.

Honestly the Ant arc is equivalent of 3 Hisokas and a Netero fighting 10 of the random fodder guys and there is literally no way such a fight could be interesting without breaking several principles.